


Feral

by darthneko, DragovianKnight



Series: Universal Constant [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character Death(s), Parental Ironhide, Past Child Abuse, Recovery, Rescue, Single Parents, chosen family, good parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-02-07 00:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1878180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragovianKnight/pseuds/DragovianKnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was meant to be a recall mission - retrieval of an independent operative for new orders - simple and clean cut. No one suspected the nightmare they'd be walking into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Finders

**Author's Note:**

> Like all of the "Universal Constant" series, this is a stand alone - they are individual fics in different scenarios/universes, all featuring the variable relationship between Hide and Shadow. PLEASE read the tags - this is going to hurt at first, but we promise it will get better!
> 
> This was originally started for the KidFic Big Bang, but both of us lost our writing mojo midway through and ditched the deadline. Mojo's starting to come back, so now there's fic!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There was nothing dangerous. Nothing but a rustle and a skitter, movement that barely prickled across his furthest perimeter sensors. Ironhide had a sick, sinking feeling that he knew very well what it was, given what they had already found in the horror pit._

* * * *

_::Command, we have a potential non-threat complication. Investigating. Going to comm blackout, status check in 1 breem, Ironhide out.::_

It was all he had sent, to command and his own team alike. Brawn had protested vigorously, backed by Trailbreaker; Ironhide had overridden them both and ordered the rest of the team to fan out and carry on the search, only sealing the door after they had done so. It was, he had assured himself in the privacy of his own processor, just a wrap up of the investigation. Nothing dangerous.

Nothing but a rustle and a skitter, movement that barely prickled across his furthest perimeter sensors. Ironhide had a sick, sinking feeling that he knew very well what it was, given what they had already found in the horror pit Labyrinth had created.

It was meant to have been a recall mission - rescue or retrieval, status unclear, but the suspicion that Labyrinth's covert ops command had been compromised had warranted the presence of several heavier combat frames on the audit team. They'd gone in expecting, officially, to find the senior operative with his hand picked trainee squad of thirteen mechs and femmes that he had, according to all records, been in the process of assembling for the last handful of vorn. His washout rate was kept from being astronomically high only because his selection criteria standard was even higher - no prior military or ops training of any sort, his program trainees were universally unknown within the Autobots according to the reports he submitted to High Command. Ironhide, after reviewing the records, had taken Sunstreaker's bet that the mech had been recruiting from civilians and neutrals. "Untrained blank slates," he'd suggested dourly. "If they don't know one end of a blaster from th' other t' start with then there's fewer bad habits to train outta them."

Unofficially, based on anomalous requisition records that had gone unchallenged for entirely too long - even Brawn had huffed a disbelieving vent cycle at that, because it hadn't taken one attentive records pusher more than two cycles to track a glitchmouse in the works and it was hardly astrophysics to deduce that whoever in the upper brass had been covering for Labyrinth wasn't doing so any more - they were going in with the assumption of resistance, either from the operative or from his trainees, or both. Assuming, Trailbreaker had noted with cynicism, that there even _were_ trainees, and the entire thing wasn't just a cover for a black market goods depot that Labyrinth - whose own records were locked up tighter than a restricted level Iaconian archive vault - had connived and blackmailed his way into. 

Still, on the surface it was supposed to be an audit, with retrieval orders only if the investigation brought solid evidence to light, and they'd gone in with weapons cold. They'd commed the little base - barely more than an asteroid caught in an elliptical orbit - from distance, received a standard automated response, and it was only when no one had met them at the airlock - not Labyrinth, not a delegated trainee, no one at all in sight - that Ironhide had ordered the others to move in with weapons free.

It was churning in his tanks, the knowledge that he had ordered each movement, a sick loathing that was directed at routine protocols he had no way of knowing were wrong. He hated every klik that had been wasted in the standard docking sequence, hated every moment that had ticked by as they had taken the base, moments wasted on stealth to not alert the base inhabitants unnecessarily, and more moments wasted securing each room. It added up, collectively, to entirely too many kliks, spans of time where if they had only been a little faster, if they had only _known..._

The bass growl of his engine was audible and ugly in the quiet, thrumming through him with the vibration of anger and a slag filled sick hatred, so far beyond outraged he couldn't even process the emotion. They had found Labyrinth, eventually. Found him disposing of evidence at the base refuse smelter, and Ironhide had never known he could _feel_ anger like that, from zero to full throttle in the space of a spark pulse, hot and cold and dropping through him like the jump from freefall to gravity.

He'd never _wanted_ to know he could break protocol and discipline and the hard codes of his own function class like that. Breems later he could still feel the crunch of plating and the electric flare of ripped circuitry beneath his hands, the phosphor searing EM of a spark field, and what Ironhide couldn't let himself think on was that he probably always would, the sensation memory flash imprinted on his neural net and inscribed there in a crystallized burst of pure hate. 

It hadn't been anything as clean as blaster fire or as proper as an arrest. They barely had a frame to return to forensics, just battered pieces, and not a single mech on Ironhide's team had lifted a hand to stop him before Labyrinth's spark had extinguished. By the time he had recovered enough of himself past the wasteland of fury Labyrinth had been nothing but scrap and energon beneath his hands - for all the good it had done, which was not at all.

Six frames. They had salvaged six frames from the jumble of evidence that Labyrinth had been disposing of, the largest no taller from helm to pede than Ironhide's leg strut. It could have been a minicon, or a bipedal symbiote, but Ironhide had never seen a minicon with armor that thin or systems that basic. 

Trailbreaker had had to quit the room before they finished, vents half stalled and choked out, engine grinding a sick backflushed sound. Sunstreaker had been blanched a deathly dull grey beneath his gold finish, swearing in an endless stream of helpless, sick invective against the deceased operative. Brawn, his optics flared white all around the edges, had uncharacteristically said nothing at all. 

Six frames that would have stood hip high at best and no taller than Ironhide's knee joint at the smallest, just thin frames with thinner armor, simple systems, not a weapon or so much as a wheel, tread, or wing on any of them. Sparks extinguished, processors gutted, but fresh enough that chroma nanites hadn't finished cooling, leaving swathes of deep green on one, or pale blue on another, purple or white or splashes of red.

Ironhide was never going to be able to scrub the feel of splashed energon or the ripping metal of Labyrinth's chassis out of his neural net, but the worst of it was that a very solid part of him was furious that the Pit spawn was dead, because the death had been entirely _too quick._

Done was done, though, and Command already had the bare basic report, terse glyphs that conveyed the minimum of fact. The nanokliks of stunned silence before acknowledgement had come back was sparse comfort - what had been meant to be, at worst, an ugly inquiry investigation into illegalities, was now going to be recharge flux fodder for vorn to come. 

They had gone through the rest of the base one micron at a time, scans and optics, which was when the sensor ghost had come to Ironhide's attention. Labyrinth had, true to the bare base of his reports, been _training_ \- they had found the modules and terminals and equipment better suited to training wild turbofoxes or crystal shrieks than sentient beings. They had found living quarters - suited for one mech alone - and a dormitory, bare and sparse of all but the most rudimentary basics.

It was there that he had heard the sound. It could have been a glitchmouse, or a figment of an overwrought processor, but he wasn't willing to bet on it. So he sealed the area and then he pulled a chair into the center of the room and he sat, and he waited, motionless and quiet. The sensor lights dimmed and he made no move to reactivate them, switching to wavelengths that didn't require light. It still took almost three quarters of a breem before it showed itself, slinking out from underneath the edge of a loosened panel behind one of the berths. 

A newspark. Ironhide quieted his own systems by force of will. One tiny sparkling to match the handful of deactivated frames they had already recovered, and the remnants of who knew how many that had gone through the smelter already. Labyrinth was dead by his hands and Ironhide regretted it for all the wrong reasons - death by anything but rust and acid had been entirely too quick.

There was just one, shivering in the darkness; it was the distressed click of the tiny femme's vocalization that he had heard. It was a primal sound that dug at his spark, piping clicks on a high frequency that all but commanded action - _here_ , is said, _distress-need-fear-danger-here!_ She was shaking, the rustling caused by the tremor of her thin plating. The sounds hooked in and clawed at protocols Ironhide hadn't known he had, his own systems pinging an echoing distress at him for his lack of action as he held himself still by force.

He waited until he was sure there were no others before moving. The femme was a slender frame class that looked as though she might never be all that large even after upgrades, more like the lighter frames they were using as scouts. Too young for full spectrum upgrades yet, clinging to the frame of the berth, blind and scared in the dark, too small to set off sensors that had been set too high - and the door he had closed locked from the outside. Ironhide ground his dente and cycled his systems up slowly, easing forward...

...the moment he moved, the nanoklik she could hear him, she was in motion - and a sparkling that small, there was a Pit load of places she could get into that Ironhide hadn't a hope of fishing her back out of. Swearing, he lunged forward and managed to scoop her up just before she would have vanished back behind the wall paneling she had taken refuge in before. 

Ironhide had never been turbofox hunting, had never really understood the point of it, but to hear Mirage tell it... well, this probably wasn't too different. His hands were abruptly full of screaming, frantic _chaos_ , all flailing limbs and twisting frame. Ironhide struggled to hold her without holding her _too_ tightly and had to catch her twice - once from midair as a flailing twist wrenched her entire frame out of his grasp, his own spark giving a lurch as she continued to scream and struggle against him, heedless of the drop beneath her.

In the end he had to capture her arms in one hand and her legs in the other, trying to awkwardly take the weight of her frame against his chest as she continued to twist and flail. "Shh," he was rumbling softly, automatic reassurances that the little femme was oblivious to. "Shh, bitlet, it's alright, yer safe, yer safe now, Ah promise..."

When she quieted a little - not giving up, just exhausted, if the pant of her ventilations was anything to go by - Ironhide cycled a vent of his own in relief. He was worried she would hurt herself worse than anything, small biting dente and scratching servos fragile and ineffectual against his armor, and the amount of yanking and twisting she was doing couldn't be good for thin sparkling struts or joints. Her furious screams had tapered into cries of pure distress, little whines and whimpers that tore at him to hear. 

She was a little taller than his knee, an armful that should have been simple and was anything but when he didn't dare release his hold on her. It left him a dilemma, hands full, unwilling to startle her into another fit by calling one of the others. In the end he did the only thing he could think of. He had to cup the little femme to his chest one handed, her frame pressed to his by his arm - too scared of the effects on fragile systems to use mag clamps on her - and quickly remove a few sealed supply packs from his subspace in order to give himself room to shelve more mass. It left a pocket beneath his plates, a hollow surrounded in the heaviest blast armor his frame contained. Micro transformations based on an external weapon brace routine made it smooth and contained and the worst she could do, he estimated, would be to kick vibrations clear through to his backstruts. 

The little femme put forth one more burst of effort when he made to transfer his grip on her, her cries rising to audial piercing levels, but Ironhide had the way of it now and quickly caught her flailing limbs again between both hands. She fit, just barely, into the space hollowed out beneath his side plates, her own twisting accidentally folding her into the pocket. Ironhide sealed his plates over the top of her, her renewed screams now echoing _inside_ his own frame with a sickening intensity.

Gritting his dente, Ironhide gingerly cupped his hand protectively over his plating. It would be dark and enclosed and frightening - but it was also enclosed and smooth and almost perfectly sparkling sized. Integrated into his frame, the space tesselated out of his own mass, it was a secure enclosure that hummed with the steady vibrations of his engines and the echo of his own spark pulse. 

A shriek and a clang accompanied a sharp vibration - she had to be curling her knee to her chin and then kicking out as hard as she could. It carried in prickling stings up his backstrut. Ironhide ignored it and settled his engine into a steadier, soothing gear before opening his comms to alert the others.


	2. Keepers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"The Guard were full-framed, all the military was. Your newsparks were sent to you pre-loaded, fully armed, ready to be deployed." Ratchet glanced from Ironhide to the tiny femme cradled in the large frontliner's arm, the frown intensifying. "You don't do... this."_

* * * *

The Autobot CMO was known for having very nearly zero patience coupled with a sharp vocalizer and a vocabulary and wit that could flay mesh off - never mind what his hands were capable of doing to a mech's systems. It was rust and rot, all of it, of course - Ratchet was a first tier medic, and if his snarl was worse than most the weight of his position as chief medical officer and physician to the Prime was likewise heavier. He had, in his own words, little patience for _stupid_ \- which included mechanisms who made extra work for medics, anyone who got themselves unnecessarily injured, and anyone who didn't prevent with maintenance things which could have been prevented. As that tended to cover most of the entire army at one point or another, Ratchet's temper was mostly understandable.

He was also a mech who wasn't overly fond of surprises - again, understandable, as surprises in his line of work often meant life or death - and his expression right that moment looked rather as though he had bitten into an oil cake only to find that its center was actually half-decaying organic matter and Ironhide flagged the image capture of it reflexively because it was the picture perfect fodder for the sort of thing that got passed around between bored soldiers during downtime. 

Which wasn't going to be happening any time soon until he dealt with the sour faced medic and the first problem at hand. A problem which interrupted the moment with a resounding clang from beneath Ironhide's plating that made the frontliner wince, pressing a hand to his side. Ratchet, all but bristling in disbelief, followed the motion with optics that were narrowing more by the instant. 

"You _can't_ be serious," the medic stated at last. "You can not _possibly_ be serious." Ratchet exvented on a drawn out note, systems shuddering. " _YOU_ \- you go out on a _recall_ mission and come back with... with..."

"A sparkling," Ironhide supplied helpfully. Another clang from beneath his plates made him shift, rolling his weight from one pede to another, engine taking on a deliberately slower note. Ratchet's expression hardened and Ironhide expelled a long vent of his own - the full report hadn't been filed yet, much less disseminated to the ranking officers. "Labyrinth - th' one we were recallin' on suspicion of all manner of slag - had a whole mess of 'em." His engine ground once, stuttering, before he could force it back into gear, the words snarled out between his dente and a static shot vocalizer. "Locked up in a room."

"And you," Ratchet snapped back, "Primus help me, you decide the best course of action is to put it _under your plating?"_

"Only way t' transport," the frontliner shot right back, voice dropping half a harmonic into the echo ghost of a growl. "Couldn't leave it."

Ratchet was already shaking his head. "No," he agreed sharply. "No, of course you couldn't. _Shouldn't,_ even, but Primus bless, Ironhide, this is a military base, not a place for a sparkling!" He straightened, focusing sharply on the former Guardian. "Particularly one that's crammed _under_ your plating." One finger stabbed at the frontliner, then at the nearest empty berth. "Out with it. _Now."_

Ironhide took an involuntary step backwards, knocking into the edge of the berth behind him, both hands coming up to his side. Another clang and something like a squeak accompanied the movement. "It's fine," he said swiftly. "She's fine, ain't nothin' wrong."

The medic's optics were deep blue slits of pure irritation. " _SHE?_ Yes, of course, I'm sure _she_ is fine, but that was an order, not a request, you glitchwit! I'm sure _she_ is perfectly fine - YOU are the throttled glitch that thought transporting a frightened sparkling like a supply pack was a good idea!" Glyphs of medical authority and rank were crackling livid in the air between them, lending weight to Ratchet's furious gesture towards the berth. "I know very well you want to help, and the best way you can do that is to put that sparkling on the berth _right now."_

The silence of the next moment was broken by another, more half hearted sounding clang. Ironhide, plates bristled in a silent show of obstinate will, finally relented and edged sideways to reach the indicated berth. Transformation seams split, peeling back across the hollow space carved out of the frontliner's own inner systems - and the burst of an abruptly struggling shape that all but fell into Ironhide's waiting hands.

* * * * *

Master was angry.

It crackled through the atmosphere of the small base and had them all huddled together, close and quiet in the gap between berths, before the door ever opened or the lights flared on to blind them. Master was angry, and that was always bad, even when they didn't know what they had done wrong. _Especially_ when they didn't know what they had done wrong, or what they were supposed to do, and this time he didn't say anything, didn't tell them what he wanted, just grabbed Hardwire and Ferrite and dragged them from the room.

He didn't bring them back.

Wildfire and Viper went next, Viper struggling and trying to twist away, and Shadow heard the snap before Viper abruptly went limp, optics flaring and going dark. It made her shiver, and when Master came back, snatching Cam out of her arms with one hand and grabbing Phaseshift with the other, Shadow moved away, wiggling behind the last few members of her cohort and pressing herself against the wall. She didn't want to go with Master. They _never_ wanted to go with Master, not really, even if he said it was all to make them _better_ , make them _useful_ , but today Master was scary.

The wall shifted when she pressed back against it, opening a tiny gap between panels. Master had never noticed that spot was loose, and they had all poked arms through into the space behind, felt wires and harder shapes they couldn't identify, but none of them had ever dared try and squeeze through. Shadow thought she could, though, and maybe the gap would lead to an open space and they could all hide until Master stopped being angry.

She lay down flat, at the bottom of the gap where it was widest. Her arm fit through, then her shoulder, and her helm was the hardest part but that fit through, too, just scraping a little along one side. After that it was easy, but there was no open space behind, just dark and the brush of wires and the hard press of conduit at her back when she twisted around and sat up.

Relay's hand pressed the panel aside, reached in to pat blindly at her pede. _::Trouble,::_ he chirped anxiously. _::Master find, be angry. Come out.::_

 _::Scared,::_ she chirped back needlessly - they were all afraid - and if there had been room she would have tried to convince them all to hide with her. Instead, she clung to Relay's hand until the sound of the room's only door cycling open made him jerk it back, and then there was only heat and darkness and the sounds from the other side of the wall. None of them told Master where she was.

She heard master leave, come back and leave, come back and leave…and the last time he came back, she could feel him standing there for a long time, then heard him pacing the length of the room. He didn't ask, and the others didn't say anything, but he would find her, he could do anything, and Shadow almost crept out of her hiding place in hopes he would punish her a little less if she did so. But then there was a snarl of sound, "No _time_ ," muffled but with the anger plain to hear, and a scrape and a clang and a cut off cry from Relay. Then the door cycled and Master didn't come back. No one came back, there were just sounds and voices she didn't know, and she could hold back the keening cries but she couldn't stop shaking, not even when the room went silent and she dared to push the panel open and wiggle back out into the cooler air of the room. 

It was just as dark out there, only the feel of the air moving through her vents and the sound of her own engine, no longer pressed tight and close around her, reassured her that she was in open space. She crept forward, found the familiar edge of the berth and anchored herself there shaking and crying, little chirps that begged her cohort to find her. 

No answers, but something growled to life in the darkness, something grabbed her when she tried to flee. Panic flooded her processor, _escape_ her only priority, ignoring wrenched joints and banged plating as she fought herself to exhaustion. Some part of her recognized she couldn't get away, but she fought anyway, even when she was once again shoved into an enclosed space and sealed away, the air no longer moving around her.

Enclosed and dark, but more comfortable, nothing jabbing into her. She could curl up when she was finally too exhausted to keep beating against the hard surfaces around her, listen to the steady sound of another system, feel another spark nearby. It soothed her a little, not her cohort but comfort nonetheless, and eventually allowed her to drop into an exhausted recharge.

That ended when something changed, a lurch of gravity shifting that made her sit up in the small space. She chirped anxiously, the sound echoing back from the walls around her before being swallowed up by the ever-present sounds of a larger system, and she could hear the muffled sounds of strange voices somewhere outside. For a sparkbeat, she froze, torn between the need to hide and the need to escape, then fear won and she kicked at the far wall, hoping to break free.

The voices rose, then there was movement that threw her off balance. Shadow kicked out again, with no real hope of getting free...only this time, there was a shift, and movement, and _light_.

Light meant the chance for escape, and Shadow twisted toward it, scrambling out of her dark prison. The light was too much, too bright, filling an unfamiliar space; she shuttered her optics and bolted _away_ , not caring that she didn't know where to go.

The shock of falling, even with a relatively soft landing, brought her optics open again. She lay motionless except for the tremor of fear running through her, optics slowly adjusting to the light. Strangers, bigger than Master, towered over her, and _seeing_ them made it worse than just knowing they were there; she keened and lunged away from the hands grabbing at her, kicking her way right off the edge of the berth.

The second landing _hurt._

Pain and fear escaped in a trembling wail. She could see places to hide, she just couldn't get to them with everything knocked funny and strange; up and down were wrong, and her limbs felt tangled up, not doing what she wanted. Desperately, she tried to thrash herself upright so she could run, but that just made her shoulder hurt, and her vents stutter and lock, heat washing through her systems with nowhere to go. Helpless and afraid, she screamed again, wanting cohort, wanting Master, wanting, above all else, to go _home_.

The wail galvanized Ironhide into action faster than Ratchet could react, the frontliner all but rolling across the edge of the berth in one smooth motion in order to reach the distressed sparkling. He scooped her up, hands cupped carefully around her in a cradling cage that pressed her close to his chassis, above his racing spark. "Shh… shhh, bitlet, Ah got yeh, shhh, lemme see, are yeh hurt?"

"She's _scared_ and you're a stranger," Ratchet told him sharply. Coming around the berth, he crouched down beside Ironhide and reached out without asking, only leveling a glare at the other mech when Ironhide reflexively twisted away, the little femme cupped closer to his own armor. "Stop that, you half glitched slagger. Let me see her, she could have injured herself."

His own hold on the now struggling sparkling was painstakingly careful, allowing no injury as he adroitly gripped and twisted her in ways that kept her from either hitting him or freeing herself. A ripple of medical tools through his servos sparked another piercing cry and Ironhide all but snatched her away from the other mech when Ratchet was done, hunching over and around the little femme with a furious glare at the medic. "What'd yeh do?"

"Relax," Ratchet replied wearily. "She's _fine_ \- mostly. Terrified, fuel tanks low, somewhat worse for wear for being carried around like _supplies_ , but fine. I just put a sedative block in to calm her down and keep her from hurting herself."

Ironhide made a sound astonishingly like the hiss of a pressurized braking system, curling himself into a ball on the floor, the better to tuck the little femme between his knees as he looked her over, helm tucked so far down it nearly touched her own. "Shhh…. shhh, sweetspark, it's alright, Ah'm sorry Ah let him do that. Sorry, bitlet, shhhh, it's ok now."

Screaming didn't bring comfort, not from Master, and Shadow didn't expect it from the strangers looming over her, either. With Master, though, it did always bring a _response_ , isolation or punishment, neither things any of them had risked without good cause. 

_This_ was a good cause, and Shadow shrieked and twisted as much as she could when pinned by a much larger frame, not caring what Master would do as long as he appeared, made the strangers go away, brought back her cohort.

It did no good, her limbs feeling strange and heavy and slow. She managed a half-sparked kick at the face looming over her before she had to stop, vents blown wide in an attempt to dissipate heat from overstressed systems, little whimpers escaping. They hadn't been bad when Master had shut the door; she had been bad hiding, but Master should still come, even if he only punished her. He could do whatever he wanted and she wouldn't cry, she wouldn't scream, she would be _so good_.

If only Master would come and take her home.

Ironhide turned his helm to let the kick glance off his cheek guard. The little femme was tiny still, no strength in her blows, and he'd had far worse jabs from flailing recruits fumbling their way through their first combat downloads. Her wailing hurt worse, a desperate sound he couldn't soothe, not matter how he wanted to. Alone, it screamed wordlessly, _alone-unsafe-help,_ the tonal cry of basic distress. 

He lifted her in his arms without thought, tucking her against his chassis, close to his spark. His engine settled into a deep, steady rhythm, field thick with the EM signifiers of safety and rest. "Shh," he hummed soft and low as the little femme quieted somewhat, "shhh, bitlet, yer safe now, ain't nobody gonna hurt yeh. Ah promise. Shhh..."

Ratchet cocked his head, watching. Several kliks later his vents off-cycled slightly in surprise when the sparkling's optics slowly darkened, shutters reflexively closing. "...Huh. You're good at that," he remarked quietly to the frontliner, glyphs marking an open ended query.

Ironhide's optics flickered to the medic, then down to the sparkling that was rapidly slipping into the first level of recharge, wails diminishing to soft hiccups as her ventilations evened out. "She's... a newspark," he said, tone softened to not disturb the sparkling in his grasp.

Ratchet shot him a look that Ironhide couldn't interpret, the medic's field lapsing into a profession stillness that was nothing but a background hum of living electronics without feel or glyph. "She's a sparkling," he corrected mildly, as though that should settle some debate Ironhide wasn't aware they were having.

"No difference, is there?" he replied. The tiny femme fit neatly against his chassis, between arm and the edge of his upper chest plating. Her plating was so _thin_ \- he could feel the workings of her systems through his tactile sensors, vibrating through thin mesh. He tucked her carefully against him, where his side vents could blow the warmer air from his inner systems over her. "Only difference is she's smaller an' don't got all her codes installed, right?"

The medic vented sharply, breaking the pose of professionalism as he sat back on his heel spurs. "And I suppose you treated all your newsparks like that?"

Ironhide cycled his optics, refocusing on the other mech, his heavier blast plates lifting slightly. "An' what's that supposed t' mean?" he asked irritably. There was something in the medic's wry, almost mocking tone that he had heard from other mecha before, a pre-judged dismissal of others that he didn't care for. "'Course we did. They're _newsparks_."

Ratchet was frowning, not with temper but with something that bled through the edges of his field like bafflement. "But.. You're talking about newsparks. The Guard were full-framed, all the military was. Your newsparks were sent to you pre-loaded, fully armed, ready to be deployed." He glanced from Ironhide to the tiny femme cradled in the large frontliner's arm, the frown intensifying. "You don't do... _this._ "

"Who says we didn't?" The bafflement was contagious. It felt like there were two separate conversations going on, and Ironhide had only a passing familiarity with one of them, never mind both, and less than no idea what the medic was getting at. He glanced back down at the sparkling, took in her position compared to his own frame, tried to parse it through the medic's gaze, and vented a small chuff of amusement. "Ah mean, not exactly like _this_ , sure. Mah squad wasn't large enough t' have a transit hab frame that could've picked anyone up like this, but anybody mah mass or less could tuck in pretty good against th' heavy gun frames. Ain't that hard."

Ratchet's professionalism was dropping by the nanoklik, giving way to confusion and what looked like a run-time loop lodged in his processor. "Pre-loaded," he repeated, as though it was anything either of them didn't know. "I've seen the records - your new sparks were deployed on the front lines of offworld combat actions from the joor they were brought online."

Something wasn't adding up and Ironhide conveyed as much in a glyph that was borderline rude, conveying his own confusion and rising irritation with the medic's tone. " _So?_ Course we did - that was our function. Combat's easy, we had all th' code for it. Didn't mean a newspark ain't still a newspark, an' a bitlet runs into somethin' they ain't got th' code for they get scared lots." He stroked a gentle fingertip across the femme's small helm, which was barely as big as his own fist. "So yeh tuck 'em up safe, reassure 'em, explain thing t' 'em until they've got a frame of reference. Yer tellin' meh this one ain't got codes, right? Frag, there's a lot of thing bigger 'n scarier than her when she don't know what it is, just in general, an' that ain't countin' we just pulled her outta a Pit of a mess."

The other mech's optics flickered in a quick reset before Ratchet exvented, the sound underscored with a note of disbelief but acknowledgement. Reaching out, he passed his hand through the air above the sparkling; Ironhide felt the prickle of medical scans against his own mesh, but the femme never stirred. "She needs fuel," he said briskly, dropping whatever they hadn't been properly talking about, which left Ironhide feeling as though he still wasn't sure what the medic had even been getting at. "It'll have to wait until she reboots - I won't risk a splice in something that small unless I have to. She'll be alright, should be out for half a joor." Something in the medic's engine ground an off-key note, a feeling Ironhide could absolutely relate to as Ratchet pushed himself to his pedes. "I need to consult with Prime. This is a fragging mess you've dragged out, no mistake."

Ironhide started to stand but the medic's hand on his shoulder stopped him, field pinging reassurance and something Ironhide couldn't parse fast enough before the other withdrew. "Stay there - someone needs to keep an optic on her and if she twitches I want to know about it." Ratchet shrugged slightly, indicating the recharging sparkling. "You're already holding her, and you're off duty? So be useful. Stay put. I'll be quick."

Ironhide had enough time to click back a short affirmative before the medic was already striding for the door. Settling himself more comfortably on the floor between the med berths, he carefully shifted the femme to warm more of her frame, watching her and trying _not_ to think on the sheer number of other frames they had dredged from the smelter.


	3. Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"The Guard," Ultra Magnus remarked after a few moments, his optics flicking towards Ironhide, "differed from the other branches of military and enforcement in that they operated in squadron-cohorts."_

* * * *

It was close to the half joor mark when Ratchet returned, the base commander and the unmistakable form of the Prime in his wake. Ironhide climbed to his pedes, the sparkling still deeply enough in recharge that she didn't stir at the jostling. "Prahm, sir..."

"At ease." It was Ultra Magnus who gave the clear - Optimus Prime's focus was on the frame held in Ironhide's grasp, the larger mech ducking down slightly to study her better.

"She's uninjured?" The question was for Ratchet but the Prime was closest to and facing Ironhide - he answered on automatic, response to a commanding officer ingrained.

"Fuel's low, external plating dented and abraded - no internal compression or leaks." Ratchet made a sound from behind the Prime and Ironhide gave the medic a quick sketched glyph of apology for speaking out of turn. "Ah know they're only Specialist grade, but Ah do have scanners."

"And I suppose you know what injury on a sparkling looks like?" Ratchet shot back.

"Ah know what plate compression on a mobile system looks like," Ironhide replied bluntly. Optimus had straightened, taking a step back from his scrutiny of the sparkling, and Ironhide shifted her to rest against his upper chassis where it was easier to hold her when standing. "Just 'cus it's in micro don't change what it looks like."

Ultra Magnus vented something that sounded like throttled back amusement; Ratchet, to Ironhide's surprise, echoed him with a short, sharp laugh. "You sound like a replay of half the arguments between the med and engineer corps at the academy," he said. The brief good humor slid away, the medic's field brushing out heavier as he turned to the Prime. "He's right. _Physically_ she'll be fine."

There was no mistaking the emphasis and all optics turned to the small black frame that lay limply in Ironhide's grasp. It was Optimus who broke the silence, his voice as deep as the thick multilayer field the Prime's frame generated. "The civilian enclaves at DX-68 and DU-102 have already been evacuated. The remaining installation creche in Iacon has been closed, the medical staff redistributed into the ranks - the assembly facilities have turned their production to full-frame warbuilds only. The temples were closed vorns ago."

His words hung in the air between them for long moments, things that were all known but the significance of them in regards to the sparkling in their midst painted a starker image than Ironhide had thought they would. Optimus vented a long cycle, his mass shifting as he leaned back on his pedes. "I had thought we could requisition a suitable frame from the assembly, but Ratchet..."

"Absolutely not," the medic snapped, both hands coming up in a sharp negative. "If she was a blank spark, certainly, by all means. But she's _not_. She's a sparkling, and she's too early in her upgrades - her current processor and endomass structure can't support a full frame upgrade yet. We'd be risking system shock and full system power drains at the very least." He shook his head, eyeing the small femme soberly. "Not to mention that spark is already tied to that processor and imprinted with what she's lived. We'd be doing her no favors, psychologically. I could wipe her, but..."

"No!" All three officers turned to look at him - Ironhide shifted the femme higher across his chassis, closer to his spark, where he could hold her with one hand if need be. His tanks felt sick, spark spinning too fast. "Yeh can't wipe her. Not unless it's th' last choice. Even a newspark's got a right t' what they _are_."

Ratchet looked as though he might argue, but the Prime held up one hand, helm shaking. "No - Ironhide's right. A clean wipe should be our last choice, only if we have exhausted all others. Her life may not have been kind to her so far, but it is still hers."

"Which still leaves us with the problem," Ultra Magnus sighed. "The infrastructure that would have dealt with her is gone. She can't just be loaded with the basic data packs for a newspark..."

"Why not?" All optics turned towards him again and Ironhide vented, shrugging. "Sorry. Ah don't get th' problem. Sure, she's small, but why not load her with th' basic packs? She's got less armor than a symbiote but ain't any reason she can't watch a monitor feed or do inventory, somethin' she don't got t' be full size for."

"And here we go again," Ratchet grumbled. By the Prime's awkward shift and Ultra Magnus' exvent, the medic had already fielded something similar from the both of them -it made Ironhide vent in exasperation, because he wouldn't have asked if he didn't know and they might have saved them all the trouble if they'd just given him the ping packet of what had already been discussed. The medic had already shifted to lecture mode, though, glyphs underlined with the specialist authority and demand for attention. "Do you know what the difference between a newspark and a sparkling is?"

Ironhide eyed the other mech dubiously, wondering where the catch in the question was. "Newspark is anyone recently sparked. A sparkling is," he indicated the femme with a jerk of his helm, "a newspark in a minimal frame, no function coding. Right?"

"Essentially," Ratchet agreed, though it was grudging and the medic had a sour tint to face and field. "A sparkling is a developmental frametype - sparked without mods or code, it can be safely developed through gradual upgrades over time, allowing for the creation of the most compatible integrated systems." He looked at Ironhide, venting sharply. "They are, almost solely, the province of well-off cohorts in higher ranking guild or Tower positions. A developmental model is a time and economically intensive undertaking."

"Can understand that," Ironhide said, nodding. "Ain't like she's got th' means for doin' much right now, at her size."

"The problem," Ratchet continued, "is that you can't swap one for the other. Full-frames-" he gestured to all of them, including himself, "are sparks harvested from the Allspark and integrated into a fully functional frame right from the start. You could all be swapped between any other fully functional frame or modifications and be fine; Optimus and I have both undergone total frame refits and it's a Pit load of slag but there's no real risk to it.

"A sparkling, regardless of how it is started - there are several ways and I won't go into it since I don't know which she is - is a spark integrated into a minimal frame _before_ the frame is functional. They adjust and adapt to their frames and mods over time, each part integrating fully before it can be replaced or upgraded. That includes their processors. I doubt she's throttled - Labyrinth appeared to be trying to train them, you said - but you can't just dump full data packs on her. The packet loss and partition fragmentation would be crippling, her memory banks can't expand that quickly. You'd be lucky if the damage didn't make wiping her a necessity, assuming it didn't damage her spark irreparably."

Ratchet shook his head sharply. "Once a spark is enframed to a certain type - full or developmental - it imprints that spark. You can't change it after the fact." He vented, the sound overly loud. "I could, in theory, downgrade _you_ to a developmental frame or strip your codes down to the basics, but I guarantee you what would come out would have your spark and an utterly destroyed processor, with a life expectancy measured in orns. The same goes for her."

Ironhide had, while the medic spoke, wrapped both arms around the small femme, tucking her almost out of sight behind the shield of his plating, only the tips of her black pedes extending over his elbow join. "Yeh don't gotta make meh charts, thanks," he growled. "Primus. Alright, no upgradin', an' nowhere t' send her. What now?"

"As Ratchet said, the traditional support structure for sparkling development is a cohort," Optimus sighed. He had the pinched sour tang to his field of worry, optics narrowed in thought. "There are three registered cohorts on base, one with former Towers affiliation. I have asked if any of them would be willing to take on a developmental newspark-"

Ratchet made a clipped, rude noise and Ultra Magnus covered what was probably an inappropriate choked laugh with a burst of static in his field and a hand raised to rub at the tension points in jaw and optics. "I'm sure Mirage had something to say about that."

The Prime shot his fellow commander an aggrieved look, but inclined his helm in assent. "They have all declined, citing inexperience, instability of duty rotations, or lack of inclination." He grimaced slightly. "Mirage, speaking on behalf of his cohort, expressed disbelief."

"That we have a sparklin' on base or that yeh'd ask him?" Ironhide guessed, amused.

"Both," Optimus admitted. The sour tang of his field was heavier, his optic focus straying back to the small frame cradled in the frontliner's arms. "Beachcomber's cohort has offered if no one else will, but they are inexperienced and all three are frequently deployed at the same time. We could send notice to the remaining civilian enclaves-"

"Which are vulnerable and more of them are launching off planet every rotation," Ultra Magnus concluded heavily. It left them all quiet, the hum of processors almost audible in the lull. "The Guard," Ultra Magnus remarked after a few moments, his optics flicking towards Ironhide, "differed from the other branches of military and enforcement in that they operated in squadron-cohorts."

It was a statement, not a question, and Ironhide glanced at the larger mech in surprise. His service record was there for the viewing, but few wanted to be reminded and fewer still ever dared to bring the decommissioned Cybertronian Guard up in his hearing, as though the subject had a pall of forbidden shame to it - the last act of a doomed regime they were all, regardless of faction, determined to try to bury. Surprise made him gruff, leaking into a burr of gravely static in his voice. “...Yeah. We did.” He bit back anything else he would have said, but the underharmonic of the glyphs starkly emphasized the past tense.

Ratchet was eyeing Ultra Magnus through narrowed optics. “I can see where you’re going with that,” he said sharply, “and normally I would be first in line to say ’Pit no’, full-framed military mecha don’t have any business around a sparkling. But...” He glanced at Ironhide, a wash of confusion shading his field. “You’re... not bad,” he allowed, grudging.

Ironhide looked from one to the other, frowning. Ultra Magnus shrugged slightly. “I was part of an off-planet action that utilized several Guardian squads,” he explained. “One of the squadrons had a newspark in their ranks. Mech should have been on disciplinary action more than a handful of times - would have been, in my division. Good when deployed, but a smelter mess in downtime. My superior officer at the time made the mistake of demanding better discipline and an example made from the captain of that squadron.”

Ironhide made an involuntary sound, equal parts derisive and a bark of laughter. Ultra Magnus nodded, expression rueful. “I had the privilege of being in audial range for that exchange, while the Guard captain ripped _my_ captain to smelter scrap for infringing on his squadron’s authority and implying they ’didn’t know how to care for a newspark’. It seemed to be a very personal subject.” The larger mech tipped his helm slightly, considering, as he looked at Ironhide. “It was the first time I ever came across the idea of variable treatment for a newspark. I remember it because the mech in question - ah, MS-318-62A, no designation that I can recall - was markedly well adjusted in his function, more then I would have expected when I heard his sparking date. It was only off duty that he was... indulged.”

Ironhide had flinched at the ID string, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Stripline,” he said, shortly. “His name was Stripline. That was th’ 29th, under Heavytread.” He grimaced, engine growling a harsher note. “That was that rust trap of a mess out in th’ Xin-qesh system mines, wasn’t it? Th’ one th’ diplo-corps made scrap out of.” He shook his head, tone indicating he didn’t need or want confirmation. “What’s th’ point?”

Silence was his only answer for a klik, long enough to make Ironhide shake the tension from his plates and raise his optics, cocking a scowl at the other three and the barely felt buzz of private comms flicking between them. “Alright, that’s enough of that,” he snapped. _“What?”_

The Prime glanced at Ratchet and Ultra Magnus before answering. “You would take care of her?”

Ironhide huffed, glancing down at the sparkling cradled against his chassis. “If she needed it, yeah, Ah...” His gaze snapped up to the other three, realization dawning in his optics and mouth twisting. “Oh. In case yeh didn’t notice, Ah don’t _have_ a cohort any more.” He didn’t try to blunt the bitterness in his field and tone; Ultra Magnus flinched and there was a silent rebuke in Optimus’ pointed step away from his fellow commander.

It was Ratchet who moved forward, fearless in the face of any amount of frontline ire. “In case you didn’t notice,” the medic said, almost gently, “neither does _she._ ” He grimaced. “Assuming Labyrinth was training them as anything except a batch-sparked labor force, but developmental sparklings form attachments as part of their data intake - if not with him, then they would have turned to each other.” The mech’s near habitual stern look softened slightly as he looked at the femme, optics darkening. “She’s been through the Pit, and I don’t just mean this rotation. She’s going to need care, maybe more than we can provide, but we have an obligation to _try._ ”

“I will contact the civilian enclaves that remain, though it will take some time with direct comms cut off,” Optimus said quietly. “In the meantime, she will need a - mentor?" The tag to the glyph made it a question, the smooth rise and fall of Optimu's broad pauldrons admitting the other mech's ignorance, a unit-sparked full-frame archivist turned Prime. "Someone to look after her.”

“Caretaker,” Ratchet supplied. “Like the wellspring tenders - those in charge of a sparkling’s basic needs and development were usually referred to as their caretakers.”

“Don’t know why yer usin’ two words when it means th’ same,” Ironhide huffed. The little femme was a bare armful of mass in his hands, tiny and delicate, nothing but thin plates and basic systems over an endomass core he could have balled up and held in one hand. Her terrified vocalizations were at the forefront of his recent memory, and the idea of handing her over to any of the other mecha in the Autobot ranks - cohort or no - made his arms tighten around her in response to the clench in his tanks. “Ah’ve got duties...” He reluctantly pointed out.

“Arrangements can be made,” Ultra Magnus assured him. “At least for the short term.”

Ironhide glanced at him and the Prime and snorted. “An’ ain’t either of yeh have any idea what t’ do if Ah handed her t’ yeh, do yeh?” He shook his head, tipping his helm towards Ratchet. “That what yeh meant about full-frames? An’ th’ labor batch ones even more so. Ah don’t...” He cut himself off with a short click. There was a gulf between himself and the others in the ranks -civilians, too many of them, and planet bound all of them, and it made Ironhide ache to think too hard on the stark emptiness of the stretch between all the things he had once taken for granted and the standards of those around him now. He had learned, and adapted, but it still ached. "Fine," was all he said aloud, short and terse, but the speed with which he accepted and acknowledged the ping of retooled orders from Ultra Magnus was telling all on its own.

Ratchet... beamed, was the only word for it, satisfaction all but sheeting off his field. Ironhide eyed him with a mix of suspicion and alarm. “What?”

“Nothing,” the medic said, airily. “Which is to say _you_ will now be doing nothing, no assigned mission to take you off base, and...”

“No,” Ironhide interrupted sharply, taking half a step back. “No, frag it, we talked about this...”

“ _I_ talked about it,” Ratchet corrected with a snap. “ _You_ have avoided it, and I’ve been trying to pin your schedule down long enough to do that rotor replacement for the better part of a _vorn_ , you half-throttled slagger.”

“Ah ain’t got time t’...”

“You do now!” Optimus and Ultra Magnus, the fraggers, were only barely covering their amusement. Ironhide flicked a rude glyph in their direction, struts stiff and plates unconsciously flared as Ratchet stepped into his space, the medic’s optics bright and determined. “I’ll give you time to get your new charge settled but I _will_ be scheduling that hip rotor replacement.” Ratchet vented, his tone and field smoothing somewhat. “We don’t have the part on hand, you know that. I’ll be fabricating from scratch to your measurements, and you’ll need adjustment time afterwards. I let you get away with avoiding me while you were on active duty, but either I replace it now or that weld is going to be a weak spot that you’re just going to _keep_ re-injuring.”

Ironhide had to stiffen his joins to keep from backpeddling, and the rigid display of his dorsal plates was a tell all its own, shield plating twitching with the repressed need to knock the medic away. Pinned beneath three sets of superior rank optics he could only nod, once, the gesture curt and his field pulled tight and flat. Ratchet was _right_ but admitting it didn’t come easily.

The medic’s field pressed against his briefly in assurance and a professional comfort that most mechanisms would have sworn Ratchet was no longer capable of displaying. “Frontline grade,” he promised quietly, “tooled to match the original. It’s not factory spec but it’s as close as I can get, and it’ll last a Pit of a lot longer than the weld will.”

Ironhide nodded again, the motion jerky and stilted. Ratchet didn’t understand - had, the previous times the subject had come up, taken his resistance as the reticence some frontliners had to anything that slowed or disrupted their habitual and familiar protocols for combat. That was true enough, but had nothing to do with the endomass crawling sensation beneath Ironhide’s plates at the idea of having a major system replaced, the unique metals of his frame replaced with a utilitarian substitute. The practical knowledge that constant combat service would necessitate it sooner or later did little to reconcile him when ’later’ was _’now’_.

The sparkling in his grasp shifted slightly, small limbs pushing weakly against his in an autonomic response to pressure - he was holding her too tightly. Ironhide eased his hold, checking her automatically for damage through the scanners embedded in palm and fingers that served as his primary diagnostic tool for weaponry systems. It fed him back the same jumble of living systems that had no correlation to his specialty that he had scanned earlier, but with no flags of compression or cracking that were indicative of injury on _any_ system. 

There _were_ small stress markers in her hydraulics and the joins in several of her thin plates, negligible notes of interior wear and places worn thin with use. Ironhide frowned, cupping the little femme's helm and back in one hand as he ran the scans again. "She gets bigger, doesn't she?" he asked abruptly.

Ratchet, caught off track, nodded. "Of course. Unless you're designing a symbiote, developmental models add to their base mass according to their spark capacity through harvest and absorption of outgrown systems..." he broke off with an exasperated noise. "Stop changing the subject!"

"Not changin' it," Ironhide replied, but he was barely tracking the medic, his attention focused on the small frame cradled in his arms as he took the measure of shoulder pauldrons no longer than his own thumb through optics and scans. Finished, he vented sharply, some of the tension in his frame relaxing as the solution to a puzzle he couldn't have properly voiced slid into place. "Give it back t' meh," he said, and at Ratchet's silence he vented again. "Th' rotor, when yeh take it out. Can smelt it down; it's pure, once yeh burn off th' weld - th' Guard used better quality than th' general factories. She's gonna need bigger plates, an' frontline grade can be stretched thinner than standard an' still be solid."

When he looked up Ratchet was just staring at him, the light of his optics shifting as the lens crystals slid into focus. Ironhide glanced beyond him to find the Prime's face and field had likewise slid into a neutral state of surprise. Only Ultra Magnus was nodding, a thoughtful hum to his field. "The Guard used interchangeable parts, didn't they? To themselves, I mean - the frame models were unique to that division."

It was Ironhide's turn to register surprise. "'Course we did. Ships didn't have th' capacity for haulin' all th' spares we'd need. Kept an emergency supply an' everything else was retooled."

Ultra Magnus' mouth twitched in something the larger mech would never admit was the ghost of a smile. "Retooled, not replaced," he repeated, a note of approval in his field. "Nothing going to waste."

Ratchet vented, reaching out to flick a finger sharply against Ironhide's audial, a move the frontliner reflexively ducked. "Oh, for Pit's sake - _that's_ why you've been playing covert ops every time I bring that slag sucking rotor up? Fine!" Another schedule, stamped with medical seals and not requiring any acknowledgement, sprang up across Ironhide's HUD. "Two cycles. Get her settled and be prepared to stay off your pedes for a decacycle after, or so help me I'll disconnect your whole spinal join!"

Ironhide knew better than to move - not when Ratchet was barking operation schedule and aftercare at him with full rein to double the recovery time if he felt it necessary, or was provoked. Not when the little femme in his arms was going to need supplies more easily found in the medbay than in his own quarters. He did, however, fully judge the other two for beating a hasty retreat, Prime and base commander both rapidly finding other things requiring their attention in the face of the CMO's exasperated ire. Ironhide shot them a look, letting them know full well what he thought of their joint cowardice, one which Optimus acknowledged with the tip of his helm and brightening of his optics which passed as an apologetic smile, and which Ultra Magnus didn't acknowledge at all except through the parade precision of his backstruts as he exited the room.

Venting a flush through his full systems, Ironhide turned back to Ratchet and interrupted the medic in mid-stride, holding up the sparkling. "Fuel. For her. What grade of filtration does she need?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This, Ironhide thought, was going to take time. More time, he admitted to himself, spark aching, then they might have - more time, certainly, then his chrono was counting down before the cycle after next when Ratchet expected him back in medbay._

* * * *

It was six full joors - over a third of his first allotted free cycle - before Ironhide managed to escape the medbay, weighted down with supplies crammed into every micron of his subspace and a still recharging sparkling tucked in amidst the overflow of supplies in a container. Ratchet had given the little femme a clean health stamp after refreshing her sedative and a thorough exam; dented, scuffed, low fuel levels, but not injured or drastically low in any system.

Ironhide, who had stood by and watched through the entire procedure, had questioned that last bit - along with several others, but Ratchet, once he had realized that the frontliner was asking on point queries based on first aid and specialist data packs, had ceased growling at him and switched into lecture mode instead. If Ironhide had been hoping for blunt, to the point answers, he had found he had accidentally unleashed the academy instructor in Ratchet's pre-war function instead.

When he had pointed out the areas worn thin in the femme's inner systems he had been treated to a lengthy lesson on endomass assimilation and fabrication. Ironhide had switched off his vocalizer and refrained from pointing out that it was basically identical to system regrowth after injury, a procedure he was intimately familiar with both from exterior and interior experience. A mecha's endomass structure, however, was usually set by their frame codes; a developmental sparkling, Ratchet had explained, had no set frame coding yet, and ideally each basic part and modification would be assimilated and replaced until they reached an endomass size and density as determined by their spark output. Ironhide had looked at the sparkling laid out on and dwarfed by the medberth, then at Ratchet, disbelief bleeding into his field. "Yeh mean she could end up bein' a habitat frame?"

"Possibly," Ratchet had replied blandly, and Ironhide had been willing to bet the fragger had done it just to watch the surprise ripple over Ironhide's plates. "But probably not. Her absorption rate isn't going nearly that fast. Subtract it from the half-life forge dating of her spark chamber and measurement suggests she'll probably be a light mass frame. Heavier than a bi-tread, smaller than either you or me. Scout frame, maybe."

Absorption, either for repair or growth, meant deficiencies in system elements. "Normal, within tolerance," Ratchet had declared, but it had been the start of a brisk scouring of medbay supplies and a growing pile of supplements, pre-filtered fuel cubes, non-acidic cleansers, and a rapidly filling partition in Ironhide's file storage of medical data on the structure and upgrading of developmental models.

"All well an' good," he had grumbled half to himself, "but it don't tell meh what temperature Ah need in quarters t' keep her runnin' best."

Ratchet had unexpectedly gripped his shoulder, a pulse of apology in the other mech's field. "I never had one under my direct care," he had admitted ruefully. "Grapple might have. We'll get you more files. For now, just do the best you can."

He had, by the medic's best estimate, a quarter of a joor from the time he finally left the medbay to when the little femme would start rebooting. "If she hasn't shaken it off in another half joor, call me," Ratchet had said, a pinched tinge of something Ironhide couldn't identify souring his field. "I'm doing the best estimate I can on her processing rates, but she'll need fuel soon."

It gave him enough time, in the quiet corridors of a mid-shift base, to return to quarters. Once there, Ironhide moved to put the container down on the already cluttered workspace surface, shoving aside a half-assembled internal blaster assembly and scooping the little femme back into his arms. It gave him enough time to look around his quarters with an assessing optic, and blow out a low ventilation as he took it in.

Rank had privileges, and he had traded on his own for a room near the engineering labs, where he frequently requisitioned parts and workspace time. It was smaller than his rank actually would have warranted but he had never needed much beyond the single workspace and berth the room offered; it was not the first or last base he expected to serve at and the little room was devoid of personal touches beyond the parts of whatever project he was currently working on.

A look around the room, gauging things at pede level for the little femme, made him hastily put her on the berth and access the basic quarter modulation controls. Shelving unfolded from the walls at his own shoulder level were well above the reach of curious small hands - weapon parts, tools, and the supplies from medbay all went onto them, until his workspace was as bare as the cycle he had claimed the room as his own.

Lowering himself onto the berth beside her made him reassess that as well, and he triggered the controls to lower the berth height by half, then half again, and finally signaled the frame to fold away entirely in a series of small transformation clicks until the berth pad was flush against the floor. Knee height to the femme, he judged, and easy for her to get on and off of. It was bare, but no more so than the common spaces of the ship he remembered from his own freshly sparked orn, when cohortmates had determinedly swept things he didn't yet fully understand out of his reach.

The little femme had curled into herself; Ironhide raised the environment temperature by a click, settled himself next to her, and took one of the pre-filtered fuel cubes - a quarter ration, no larger than his palm - from his subspace. Ratchet had assured him that they could be refilled from the medbay at any time, that the filter grade was a standard medical stock. Keeping one optic on the femme, Ironhide cracked the seal and took a small sip, letting his internal sensors pick apart the filtration levels of the bland, smooth taste.

* * * * 

The space around her was quiet and cold, devoid of the sound and warmth of other systems. Shadow held herself still as she rebooted, straining to fill the empty space with nothing more than audial data, but heard only one other system. It sounded wrong; not her cohort, not Master.

Strangers, she remembered, shivering, her optics clicking online. The frame near her was big, bigger than Master, a solid wall of red and wrong and fear. She flung herself away with a muffled shriek, rebounding painfully off a hard surface before scrambling frantically into open space. 

_::Master!::_ The Basic wailed through her vents with all the volume she could force into it, nearly covering the clicks of _need-fear-help_ streaming from her vocalizer. _::Sorry bad-wrong sorry sorry. Come please.::_

The space around her had too much light, too much open, with nothing to orient her as she frantically tried to get away, to hide, to find her cohort. Movement was conditioned into her; to stop was pain, was target, and she kept moving until she fetched up at the back of the most sheltered space she could find, folding herself into a ball, optics static-shot and vents heaving.

He should, Ironhide told himself harshly, have been better prepared - the little femme hadn't had a single response which wasn't fear driven. As it was, he could only be thankful he had thought to lower the berth, where the light tumble off of the pad to the floor was too small to do her real damage. 

Her shrieks had Basic glyphs to them, and he could feel his tanks seize up cold - _Master_ would have been Labyrinth, he was sure, and the frantic apologies, begging for the return of a mech he had ripped into with his bare hands, made him feel sick. Six frames in the smelter and the little one huddled in a shuddering ball beneath his worktable had hidden beneath a loose panel of the wall. _Master_ might be the only thing she knew to cry for, but it was the last thing she needed.

Slowly, keeping his engine in a steady, deep vibration that his function class had once used to calm rescue operations, he eased down onto the floor. _::Safe,::_ he whistled softly. _::Safe now. No harm.::_

He could, if he moved very slowly, just push the little cube of fuel across the floor to within a few handspans of the area by the workspace. Ironhide pulled back before she could dart away again, settling beside the berthpad, and triggered the door lock with a short pulse. She wasn't, by the look of her, operating on anything beyond panic protocols, and keeping her safe would need to be his main priority. He sent a brief update to Ratchet - _Awake, we're seein' about fuel now_ \- and downshifted the harmonics of his engine into an even slower rumble. _::Safe now. No hurt, no harm.::_

The stranger did not try to drag her out into the open. No grabbing, no yelling, no orders, and when he moved away from her hiding spot, leaving the energon behind, Shadow let herself uncurl a little. Only one cube, a fraction of what they were used to sharing, but still fuel, and they had a limited time to share it among them. She chirped for the others, distress growing as there was no response, until her calls dissolved into a wordless keen and she tucked herself more tightly against the wall.

To her surprise, the mech made no move to take the fuel back. He talked to her, she remembered. Talked like her cohort did, Basic whistles and clicks that were deeper but no different from what she knew. Master didn't talk to them like that. Master's orders were always from the language packs he had uploaded into each of them. 

She reset her optics to clear the static and looked at the stranger carefully. He was watching her, but he was across the room and he didn't look angry like Master always did. He didn't move when he saw her optics were watching him, or when she slid carefully toward the end of the table and reached for the energon, or when she dragged the cube under the table and retreated against the wall again. Still, she tucked the cube carefully behind her. The others weren't there now, but they shared. They always shared. She could wait for them.

Location chirps, and Ironhide's spark ached to hear it because whoever else - however many others - the little femme was calling for were gone and the sparkling tucked herself in and shook, keening a wordless note of distress and pain. When she finally gathered herself to take the cube it was to pull it into the deepest recess beneath the workspace, untouched.

He wanted to gather her back up safe but every move he made only alarmed her more. Proximity wouldn't help, not when he was clearly registering as a threat, but neither would leaving her alone help. Instead, moving slowly, one painstaking shift at a time, he took out another cube and nudged it closer. _::For that-one,::_ he whistled gently. _::Yours. Safe.::_ When he had pushed the cube as close as he dared without making the sparkling bolt again, Ironhide retreated to the far side of the room, planting his back to the wall and aft to the ground. 

He took several mounting brackets he was in the process of re-tooling from his subspace - it had reached the fine tuned smoothing stage and the sounds were softer, only the shushed rasp of mesh cloth over metal as he ground down the manufacturing burrs. It kept his hands busy and let him tip his head down, optics engaged, though his sensors were still tracking the tiny form across the room. Setting his engine into a slow, deep idle sound that resonated all the harmonics he knew that meant _safety_ and _home_ , Ironhide sat, his only movements tiny ones between his hands, and carefully tried to not pay attention.

Shadow didn't immediately move, unsure if she believed the stranger. Energon was never for only one; energon was shared, no matter how many or few cubes appeared when it was time for them to fuel. No one else answered her calls, though, and the mech had said for her. 

She stayed where she was for a long time, while the stranger lost interest, his attention on something in his hands. It felt safer when he wasn't looking at her, and as her systems slowly cycled down from the panic of earlier, she became aware of a growing demand for fuel. A distressed click escaped her vocalizer as she looked from the cube she was guarding to the one still out in the open. Fuel was shared, but she had no one to share with. 

The stranger had put out both cubes. He had talked to her. He had not tried to grab her. He had said hers.

He was not Master; maybe he didn't know. Maybe he would put out fuel for the others when they returned.

Cautiously, she took the second cube, pulling it under cover as well, and kept her optics on him as she broke the seal and took a swallow.

Ironhide vented soundlessly, a soft exvent of relief as the sparkling broke open one of the cubes. He pinged another update to Ratchet confirming her intake and received an acknowledging ping, along with the alerts of other incoming messages - mission reports from Trailbreaker, Brawn and Sunstreaker, which he shelved for later, and a brief message from the Prime confirming that all due process would be made in attempting to contact one of the remaining civilian enclaves. 

He shelved that as well and turned his attention to the list of supplies Ratchet had shoved off on him, cross-correlating it with the diagnostic of what the little femme was low in, and then paused and cross checked it again against what would - or would not - be easy to induce a newspark to intake. Bismuth and yttrium were dismissed out of hand, as was molybdenur and thulium; sharp and bitter on one hand, sour on the other. Silicon, cerium and rubidium were more likely, from bland to pleasant, but it was vanadium, in a thin, pressed wafer, that he finally picked from the assortment in the dosage case Ratchet had given him. The scent of it across his intake sensors was sweet and tantalizing, even without any notable deficiency in his own systems.

The little femme froze when he moved, stock still and all but vibrating, her bright optics tracking him unflinchingly. Humming softly, Ironhide leaned forward in the same slow, micro movements, placing the supplement wafer down where the cubes had been. _::Yours,::_ he whistled, retreating. "Intake," he added, and then, not sure if she had any word glyphs or not _::Fuel, not-fuel. For that-one.::_

Shadow chirred, a soft, questioning sound that was not, quite, a question. He had said hers, again, but this was not fuel, was not familiar at all. She crept forward on all fours, optics never leaving him, olfactory sensors cycling up to analyze the unfamiliar scent. It smelled good, made her want it even though her systems were fueled and she shouldn't want anything more.

She reached for the new object blind, hyper-aware of every shift in the stranger's position. It was almost as wide across as her palm, and the strange mech made a low sound of approval when her fingers curved around it.

He said hers, she reminded herself. He said hers, like the energon had been hers, and it smelled so good.

Bracing herself to be wrong, she snatched her hand back under the table and shoved herself against the wall again, her prize clenched tightly to her chassis. The stranger sat and watched and didn't yell, letting her examine the thin, brittle wafer. Intake, he had said; she bit down on one corner and it cracked easily between her dente, the taste sweet and strange. That low, almost inaudible, rumble of approval vibrated in the air between them again, and she relaxed, nibbling at the broken edge of the treat.

This, Ironhide thought, was going to take time. More time, he admitted to himself, spark aching, then they might have - more time, certainly, then his chrono was counting down before the cycle after next when Ratchet expected him back in medbay. 

Short term. Too much of the longer term plans were insubstantial, decision trees that hadn't been plotted out first. One and two thirds cycles, during which he needed to get the femme settled enough to be left alone for the joors he would be surgery. 

It was so _wrong_. She shouldn't be alone, not then, not at all, and he had already tried to think of who he could ask for support but the answer was there in the same neat flanking maneuver they had brought out in the first place - he had no cohort, the days of his squadron at his back and he at theirs long gone, and the little femme crunching on the supplement wafer with wide opticed enthusiasm had no cohort left either. They were both alone, and the pain that ached through him was an old one, something he thought he had archived already but which still echoed and shuddered through him.

Another gulf, another difference between what he had known and where he was now, surrounded by mecha that had no context or recognition of things that had defined his very function class. "Alone," he whispered, a bare hint of vocalization across an exvent, the glyphs wrapped in the unique cant layers of the Guard where to be alone, to be the last of a cohort, meant a closing of ranks around until one was never alone again. 

There had been no ranks, no cohort-squadrons left when that word, stripped to its stark literal meaning, had ripped him apart. He would not - could not - leave a pre-coded sparkling to that. 

Time, Ironhide thought grimly, and the first thing was to make her safe. His motions were still startling her - he didn't for a moment think that any _other_ motions were going to be any less alarming, but a few moments of terror might give her better rest after. He slipped the brackets back into his subspace, took out a tablet, and patched into the room controls once more, sketching out the rearranged changes with a careful hand before uploading them.

Movement in what Shadow had begun thinking of as a safe space startled a scream from her. The wafer fell, unnoticed, from her hand to shatter on the floor as the table above suddenly sank down, and the wall at her back hummed a quiet vibration through her plates as it reached out, wrapping around the table supports. She curled up, keening, unable to decide if it was better to stay and be trapped or risk the bright and open spaces...and then the vibration stopped, and when she cautiously raised her head the area around her was darker, enclosed except for a single opening that allowed her to watch the stranger's movements.

She reached out, patting the wall to her right. It was solid and cool under her hands, just like the wall behind her. The darkened space around her felt safe, just big enough to curl up or stretch out, high enough for her to get up on her knee joints and have room. Big enough for maybe two more to fit, and she carefully gathered the broken remains of the wafer, piling them atop the energon cube.

Maybe the others would come back soon. 

Ironhide caught a quick glimpse of the little femme as she anxiously checked the opening he had left in the newly enclosed area beneath the workspace. Dropped down a few handspans lower, the wall plates extended around most of the perimeter, it created a sparkling sized shelter within the larger dimensions of the room. 

It wasn't right and it wasn't enough, but until he stopped registering as a stranger and threat to her it at least gave her somewhere to retreat to. Which she did, ducking out of sight, only the faint noise of her motions marking the corner she had curled into.

Letting out a low ventilation, Ironhide shook tension out of his back joins. There was another small shrill of alarm from beneath the modified workspace but he resolutely ignored it; the only way strange became familiar was through experience. Tugging the berth pad a few steps to the right, where he could easily see both the room door and the entrance to the modified space, he rolled onto it and stretched out, letting his systems stretch long, hydraulics hissing softly.

She hadn't known the supplement, he was willing to bet on it, but she had either known the glyph for 'intake' or been smart enough to correlate 'fuel' with a solid. He arched his dorsal plates, working a soft series of clicks down the joins while he thought, and switched the lighting down by half.

"Ironhide," he announced aloud, the bass tones of his voice quiet in the still silence. _::This-one designation. That-one hears-knows?::_

Shadow hesitated, tucked back in the shelter of her hiding place. The decrease in lighting meant it was nearly dark where she was, and while it still felt safe the dimmer light made the outer room more attractive. The stranger was still there, though, visible and too close for her to risk exploring.

She could maybe go closer to the opening of her space, now that he wasn't moving, close enough to better hear the sound of his systems.

He wasn't looking at her, and she had begun to consider poking her head out of her nest, when he spoke. His voice made her jump, but then he talked to her again, the whistle-clicks of Basic pulling an affirmative whirr out of her vocalizer before she realized.

_::Yes,::_ she chirped again, after a short pause. He wasn't cohort, but he talked to her, and she was alone. _::This-one hears-knows.::_ Another brief silence, waiting anxiously to see if her answer was what he wanted, but unlike Master he didn't react. "Ironhide," she said, to prove she really understood. _::This-one hears-knows.::_

_::Good!::_ The approval was easy and rolled through him; Ironhide pushed his field outwards, trying to let the little femme feel it. Ratchet had taken the core measure of her code base but hadn't been sure without a full line by line check which code packs beyond Basic she had installed. The notes were all filed in Ironhide's storage, but it was reassuring to find out from first-hand that her vocalizer was a multi-purpose advanced enough model to use both words and Basic, and that she could differentiate the two. 

He eased his chassis plates outwards, letting the sound of his engine echo more loudly between the spaces of his systems in a deep, continuous thrum. _::That-one, bitlet, knows others?::_ "Fuel, safe, danger, stop, yes, no."

Shadow wiggled a little, edging all the way to the opening of her hiding place; he wasn't Master, but the praise still felt good. _::This-one understands,::_ she repeated. _::Master orders, this-one understands, obeys.::_

Except she didn't, always; she hadn't obeyed when Master wanted to take her with the others. She wrapped her arms around herself, curling into a ball, loneliness and a need to understand overriding her fear. _::This-one not always obey. Bad-failure. This-one...this-one alone because bad?::_

It took everything Ironhide had not to tense, not to let the rush of feeling flood his field or stutter through the sound of his engine. It took him two vent cycles to work past it, a mix of rage and pain that scoured through him. 

_::Not bad,::_ he whistled when he could do so steadily. _::Not failure. That-one smart, good, stay-safe.::_

He could watch her without moving much, a tiny shape huddled at the edge of the makeshift shelter that he ached to tuck back in against his chassis. Her thermal readings were lower than he could be sure of; he clicked the room environment a notch higher, easing his own plates open to compensate.

_::Bitlet,::_ he whistled gently, pure Guardian cant where the term had been an all purpose designation for every newspark, wreathed in layers of care and affection. _::Alone... because wrong. Because accident. Sorry, so-sorry.::_

_::Alone,::_ Shadow whistled. Alone hurt, but she didn't say that; things that hurt were punishments, and the stranger thought she wasn't bad. She didn't want him to change his mind.

She stayed curled up, small and as close to invisible as she could be without going back in her hiding place. The room was warmer now, warm enough for her systems to begin to cycle toward recharge, but she had never recharged without her cohort packed around her.

_::Alone always?::_ she asked, the sounds unsteady. _::This-one...this-one not like alone.::_

There were limitations to Basic and the first core pack of most rudimentary glyphs. There was no good way to promise her that she was not alone without a faltering, butchered explanation that her cohort was dead, and then an even worse attempt to explain what that meant. Sentience without code, Ironhide thought, without the data banks that made sense of the world around them, and the idea was chilling. Pain, fear - she was predominately feeling, telegraphed clearly through the tremors in her systems and the tight curl of her frame, without needing words at all. 

Alone was pain. Alone was grief, even if she didn't have the word for it. Alone was fear of the unknown and unfamiliar, and the pain of loss, an endless wanting to fill the empty spaces where countless other small frames should have been packed in around hers. 

Developmental models formed attachments, he remembered Ratchet saying, and 'Master' might have been the center that dispensed 'good' or 'bad', but _alone_ meant her siblings and the feel of plates ripping beneath his hands was never going to be enough to atone for those fragile frames they had rescued just a little too late.

_::Not alone always,::_ he whistled softly. _::This-one stay with. Protect, keep safe.::_

With a stranger was still alone, but this stranger thought she was good, praised her with an ease and enthusiasm Master never had. He talked to her. He gave her fuel.

He had not hurt her, yet. If she was very good, maybe he would never need to punish her.

_::This one recharge,::_ she clicked, sliding back into her space. She didn't think she could be that good, but she could try. She could at least stay out of the way, where he wouldn't see her to punish her.

Ironhide kept the rumbling echo of his own systems going for a handful of kliks, then a handful more. Steady, even, and when he finally let the sound quiet there was nothing to be heard in the room, and nothing to be seen except the still motionless thermal signature of small barely shielded systems, tucked up against the corner.

He waited half a joor more after that, until he was certain she was deep in recharge. 

He could, he admitted to himself, have reached in and carefully lifted her up just enough to slide a spare bit of berth pad beneath her - enough to give her some comfort while leaving her be in the safety and security of her own space. It was still an empty space, though, nothing but the illusion of walls and a roof, an empty space with only her tiny frame in it. He could remember empty rooms, the illusion of safety, and 'alone' didn't care about illusions. It crept through walls and under doors, through roofs and floors and cushions, and the sharp claw of it at a spark in the quiet of recharge had been something it had taken him vorn to escape. 

In the end, he lifted her up, her little frame tucked tight around herself, and carried her carefully back to his own berth. He set her on the cushion where she could see and reach her makeshift space unobstructed, before carefully curling the mass of his own bulk over and around her in a living shelter, field and system warmth washing over her.


End file.
